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MBA 11 advice

O

Oskimon

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 14, 2013
14
0
I'm looking to upgrade from my MBP late 2011 to a brand new Air. My reason for buying is that I want more portability since I find myself leaving my Pro at home when I go to work/school because of the weight and size. At home I use a PC for gaming and stuff like that.

I mostly do writing, surfing, reading PDFs and so on, but sometimes I do some light music/podcasting. I've got a USB-mixer hooked up to my pro and record using two mics and it keeps cool and silent during the hour or so long process, will and MBA 11" be able to to this aswell?

I will get the 8gb RAM upgrade.

Still not entirely sure of the size and I might just go for the 13, but the 11 seems to fit most of my uses better.

Sorry for my bad English, it's not even close to being my first language :)
 
Go Air!

I have a 2011 air and I do heavy, heavy coding, photoshop, coda, VMs you name it and hardly ever seen a slowdown so you should be just fine. I chose the 11" air because I work 2h on the train everyday and it's the best CPU I've ever used so go for it! It's sometimes faster then my 12 core work mac pro from work (thanks to the ssd vs hd).

I'lll be keeping the mac pro and work will be upgrading my laptop to a souped up haswell 11" next week.

That's how much I like the air. I had my choice of retina 15", mbp, mba, whatever I wanted and I still went with a souped up 11" air. It simply cannot be beaten.

Just a few things to consider (and the reason I'll be upgrading):

- 128gb ssd is NOT enough for me anymore (will be getting 512gb)
- battery is rough on that model but that should have improved a lot + MAverick will improve it even more. It wasn't a huge concern for me as I have plugs everywhere but it was a pain a couple of times during off premise meetings. This should be much better now

So, if you need all day battery go 13" if not no regret go 11". The 11" has the same battery as last year's 13" crazy.
 
blurobot said:
I have a 2011 air and I do heavy, heavy coding, photoshop, coda, VMs you name it and hardly ever seen a slowdown so you should be just fine. I chose the 11" air because I work 2h on the train everyday and it's the best CPU I've ever used so go for it! It's sometimes faster then my 12 core work mac pro from work (thanks to the ssd vs hd).

I'lll be keeping the mac pro and work will be upgrading my laptop to a souped up haswell 11" next week.

That's how much I like the air. I had my choice of retina 15", mbp, mba, whatever I wanted and I still went with a souped up 11" air. It simply cannot be beaten.

Just a few things to consider (and the reason I'll be upgrading):

- 128gb ssd is NOT enough for me anymore (will be getting 512gb)
- battery is rough on that model but that should have improved a lot + MAverick will improve it even more. It wasn't a huge concern for me as I have plugs everywhere but it was a pain a couple of times during off premise meetings. This should be much better now

So, if you need all day battery go 13" if not no regret go 11". The 11" has the same battery as last year's 13" crazy.
Click to expand...

9 hours of battery will be more than enough for me, I rarely go that long without being able to charge my laptop should I need it.

The 128gb will be fine, I haven't come close to filling up more than that on my Pro, and as I said it won't be my main computer so I think it will be fine. My 32gb thumbdrive can keep my movies on the go if needed.

As for the RAM upgrade I'm sure it won't make or break my experience but I would rather be safe than sorry.
 
AppleMark said:
You can never have enough RAM in a machine that is non-upgradable [swap-out]. Try telling that to my 2008 MBA....

Always look to buy the highest spec computer, or device you can afford and then go for the next highest one. ;)
Click to expand...

Agree, within budget RAM, processor and then HD in that order(for me anyway)

Depending on your needs HD and processor the other way round but with the

MBA RAM is the obvious upgrade
 
I'm seeing quite a few folks going with the 11" mba; I wonder if the size will start to bother later down the road?
 
blurobot said:
I have a 2011 air and I do heavy, heavy coding, photoshop, coda, VMs you name it and hardly ever seen a slowdown so you should be just fine. I chose the 11" air because I work 2h on the train everyday and it's the best CPU I've ever used so go for it! It's sometimes faster then my 12 core work mac pro from work (thanks to the ssd vs hd).

I'lll be keeping the mac pro and work will be upgrading my laptop to a souped up haswell 11" next week.

That's how much I like the air. I had my choice of retina 15", mbp, mba, whatever I wanted and I still went with a souped up 11" air. It simply cannot be beaten.

Just a few things to consider (and the reason I'll be upgrading):

- 128gb ssd is NOT enough for me anymore (will be getting 512gb)
- battery is rough on that model but that should have improved a lot + MAverick will improve it even more. It wasn't a huge concern for me as I have plugs everywhere but it was a pain a couple of times during off premise meetings. This should be much better now

So, if you need all day battery go 13" if not no regret go 11". The 11" has the same battery as last year's 13" crazy.
Click to expand...

Are you getting the i7 or i5?
 
I have new 11" & 13" MBA's

I'd be very cautious before choosing the 11" MBA. Take notice that it has a 16:9 aspect ratio display, which greatly reduces the vertical height of the screen, thus increasing scrolling that one must do. The amount of display area is quite small.

The 13" MBA is the normal (for Macs) 16:10 aspect ratio. This combined with a 13" display is ideal. Size & weight differences are so trivial that I cannot imagine finding the 13" too big.

Finally there's a full two hours more battery life in the 13", at least from my personal experience.

YMMV.
 
HiDEF said:
I'm seeing quite a few folks going with the 11" mba; I wonder if the size will start to bother later down the road?
Click to expand...

I don't exactly know why the 13 MBA has a larger footprint than a 13 Pro, but to me that's the "problem."
 
I went to a store that carries both the 11 and the 13 and tried them out a bit. It wasn't an Apple store, so they wouldn't let me play around too much, but I got what I wanted and I'll be ordering the 11 inch today.

Thanks for all the help guys, now I'm off to the cases and sleeves thread for some Amazon tips, the swedish market for sleeves isn't all that great :p
 
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